An Investigation of International Students' Linguistic and Sociocultural Adjustments in the UK

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The UK has consistently remained as the second most popular study destination for international students behind only the US (UNESCO 2022). The steady growth of international students is more remarkable alongside the UK's departure from the European Union and the COVID-19 pandemic (HESA, 2022). The globalised nature of education in the UK is not directly caused by the presence of international students, but due to the inclusion of them in communities (British Council, 2014). It has been found (Page, 2019, Lu, 2021) separation of international students can cause their poor social and academic performance, and even can risk their personal safety. That is why Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) policy has currently been highly emphasized in the UK.Therefore, the integration of international students is a principal factor in the expanding concept of EDI due to the long-term benefits for students, universities, and the whole UK society (British Council, 2014, Bender et al, 2019). It has been found that productive integration benefits sojourners' learning and social satisfaction (Merola et al, 2019, Lu, 2021), and can enhance university staff's multicultural awareness to make the integration an interactive process (Wang & Moskal, 2019). International students' high-level integration can also reduce the discrimination of race in the UK society, the 'Black Lives Matter' (Francis & Wright-Rigueur, 2021) and 'Asian Hate' (Jeung 2021) surge make the engagement with international students more urgent and necessary.Thus, it is important to understand the adjustment experiences of sojourners to achieve a high-quality 'student-centered ethos' (Schartner & Young, 2016) and the application of EDI across UK universities. There is ample research that explores sojourners' adjustments in the UK. However, different domains have been researched separately, and there is a lack of research that looks into the dynamic interrelationships between them (Zhou & Todman, 2009). Also, there is little research that probes what strategies international students employ to cope with such adjustments. Additionally, most of the research explores sojourners' language experience in formal academic learning, but a lack of research investigating their language adjustments in communicative social settings, which further limits the contribution to the investigation of interactions between linguistic competencies and social abilities.Following this, this postdoctoral research aims to investigate international students' adjustments in the UK particularly through linguistic and sociocultural domains. It seeks to explore the dynamic interrelationships between the two domains. This research also intends to probe what strategies sojourners employ to cope with such adjustments.My doctorate research investigated autonomous Chinese sojourners' language and social experiences in the UK particularly focused on how they sought affordances in diverse social networks for linguistic and non-linguistic encounters. Chinese sojourners are currently the largest group of international students in the UK (HESA, 2021), and these sojourners, mostly, conduct low-level integration (Wu, 2014, Lu, 2021). Therefore, a good understanding of Chinese sojourners' experiences lays a robust foundation for this postdoctoral fieldwork. This postdoctoral research, if funded, will build on my doctoral findings to offer comprehensive understanding and sharper insights by including a more diverse group of international participants. The findings of my doctorate research have shown that 'ethnic identity' plays a crucial role in integration. Also, a better understanding of participants' barriers during their adjustments can portray a clearer picture of how to provide more focused support to minimise sojourners' encountering learning and culture shocks during this journey.